As the world has become more complex and as our understanding of different phenomena has increased, there has been a concomitant need to improve methods of measuring the wide variety of substances. From the clinical laboratory, there has been increasing interest in being able to measure various substances in the doctor's office, the home, at bedside, in the field, as well as other sites. With the continuously increasing number of physiologically active substances, both naturally occurring and synthetic, there has been a desire to be able to measure these substances as indicative of the health status of an individual, for therapeutic dosage monitoring, for research, and the like. The substances may be found in a wide variety of samples, ranging over numerous orders of magnitude in concentration for their dynamic ranges of activity, and further differ as to the ease with which one may detect their presence. An area which has only recently assumed substantial commercial importance and will be of increasing importance is the detection of specific nucleotide sequences. Nucleotide sequences find application in genetic counseling, forensic medicine, detection of diseases, and the like. There is, therefore, a wide diversity of opportunities to measure diverse substances from different sources with different sensitivities and for a wide range of purposes.
The methods for detection have ranged from radioactive labels, light absorption, fluorescence, chemiluminescence, agglutination, etc. Each of these methods has found application and has disadvantages as well as advantages over alternative methods. As yet, there has been no single method which has proven applicable in all situations. There is, therefore, substantial interest in devising new methods which may provide for significant opportunities in measuring compounds of interest, where the protocols, apparatus, or reagents may provide advantages over other techniques.